But you have so much in common with Trump. He loves to deny climate change and promote activities that exacerbate it just like you.How pathetically childish and frankly thick it is to argue that because an area has experienced hurricanes, floodng or wildfires before means that any recent events cannot be attributed to climate change.Obviously anybody who denies anthropomorphic climate change in the year 2024 is far too far gone down the right wing conspiracy trope rabbit hole to bother engaging with at any adult level on any topic but for the casual reader here is the expert view on the recent events in Valancia from the World Meteorological Organisation. So do get rid of that fossil-fuel burning SUV if you have any sense of shame:https://wmo.int/media/news/devastating-rainfall-hits-spain-yet-another-flood-related-disaster"Record-breaking rainfall and flash floods have hit Spain, causing many dozens of casualties and massive disruption and economic losses in the latest of a series of flooding disasters that have hit communities around the world. It underlines why the top priority of the WMO community is to save lives as climate change super-charges extreme weather."Role of Climate ChangeAccording to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, extreme weather events causing highly impactful floods and droughts have become more likely and more severe due to anthropogenic climate change. And this has been borne out by repeated events.“As a result of rising temperatures, the hydrological cycle has accelerated. It has also become more erratic and unpredictable, and we are facing growing problems of either too much or too little water. A warmer atmosphere holds more moisture which is conducive to heavy rainfall," said WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo.The phenomenon which hit Spain – known as Isolated Depression at High Levels, or DANA in Spanish – often occurs during the autumn season because the remaining warm surface heat from summer meets a sudden cold invasion aloft from the polar regions. This leads to what meteorologists used to call '''a cut-off system'' with low-pressure values that persist over a few days and rotating over the concerned region. It also impacted southern France.“The presence of warm air near the surface being fueled by excessive moisture from the still-warm Mediterranean Sea and the instability generated by the conflict with cold air in the upper atmosphere leads to large convective clouds with heavy downpours and sudden flash floods,” says Omar Baddour, chief of Climate Monitoring at WMO.“Climate change is expected to make these systems more intense because of warmer sea waters and increasing moisture in the atmosphere,” he said.For each 1°C of warming, saturated air contains 7 percent more water vapour on average. Every additional fraction of warming therefore increases the atmospheric moisture content which in turn increases the risk of extreme precipitation events.A similar "cut-off" system in September 2023 (Storm Daniel) caused massive devastation in Greece and then moved on to Libya where it triggered the collapse of dams, causing massive loss of life.
Paul Campbell ● 49d